the strange and beautiful life of ava lavender

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender was more about her mother and her lost and longing love than about Ava herself-which bugged me…I’m sorry. I know, right? We readers and reviewers always want more depth, more description, more world-building….but in this case, the world building and character back stories suffocated me and made me feel like the sole purpose (or at least what I thought the sole purpose was supposed to be) was convoluted and wasn’t even in the story all that long….and I feel like the main character wasn’t even the main character… Love, as most know, follows its own timeline, disregarding our intentions or well-rehearsed plans. I disliked this book so much because, wait for it, it was almost too overdeveloped. But that’s where it went south for me-this book’s fatal flaw, for me, was what other people said made it so special. My biggest problem with this book was certainly not the characters-they were painted vividly and didn’t leave any fogginess as to their personalities or what their purpose was in the story-nothing was left to the imagination. So when I hardly felt the pull to highlight something, it really set the alarms off in my head. What’s worse is that I barely even highlighted anything…even if I don’t love a book, I always highlight the parts I do love like crazy. I collected them: how love arrived when you least expected it, how someone who said he didn’t want to hurt you eventually would. It was because of my condition, I believe, that I noticed life’s ironies a bit more often than the average person. I found it ironic that I should be blessed with wings and yet feel so constrained, so trapped. Never has a shorter book been more boring.I HATE saying this about such a popular book, but I just could not and did not connect. Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, BORING. It was beautifully written (contrary to above^^^) and it had a well thought out story line with no gaps to be seen…but…I can sum up this book in one word and, let me tell ya, it’s not groundbreaking: boring.

Well….two months ago when I heard about this book and saw the stellar reviews, I never would have thought this would be the end result. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

The strange and beautiful life of ava lavender